A well-cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educated during all this time.

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.

It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.

Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.

A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.